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Not
currently available
It is hoped that this
review will stir interest at DG or reissue companies
such as Naxos or Arkivmusic.
Marc
NEIKRUG (b. 1946) Through Roses (Music-drama for an actor and
eight solo instruments) (1979-80)
Will Quadflieg
(speaker); Pinchas Zukerman (violin); Michel Rouilly (viola – alto);
Wolfgang Bogner (cello); Gunter Rumpel (flute); Eduard Brunner
(clarinet); Anne Leek (oboe);
Pierre Beboux (percussion); Marc Neikrug (piano)/Christoph
Eschenbach
rec. Zurich; Radio DRS; Studio 1; June 1985 DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON
4159832 [43:40]
A
man is on a bench on a station platform, slowly waking from
a nightmare. He is agitated: “Time. What time is it?” He
looks for a clock, becoming aware of the music in his head which
disturbs him continuously: “Silence. Silence. Silence!” Gradually
the music stops: “It stopped. Good. That’s called mental
discipline. Missed the train! Missed the train! Yet again!” So
begins Marc Neikrug’s heartbreaking odyssey Through Roses.
There
are moments of revelation in works of art that have affected
me profoundly and will stay with me forever: Dali’s Christ
of St. John on the Cross, Rembrandt’s St. Paul in Prison,
the death scene of Abraham Lincoln’s son in Gore Vidal’s Lincoln,
Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, John Updike’s
poem A Dog's Death, Robert Frost’s Never Again
Would Birds’ Song Be The Same, the choir of angels in Mahler’s
Symphony 2, the final act of Puccini’s La Boheme, Sir William
Walton’s A litany … Drop, drop slow tears or Olivier’s
portrayal of Hamlet just to name a few. Through
Roses is such a work…
A
man, a Holocaust survivor and once destined to have been a great
violinist, is possessed by the memory of his experiences at
Auschwitz. As fate would have it, it was his ability to play
the violin that kept him alive in the death camp. His role was
to play music mornings and evenings for the work details leaving
and arriving back to camp or to give “concerts” for the benefit
of the camp’s commandants and their families. Sometimes, they’d
have to play waltzes, faster and faster, as old men were forced
to dance until they collapsed and sometimes, they’d have to
play, as prisoners – women and children alike - were led to
their deaths in the gas chambers.
The
commandant lived just beyond the perimeter of the camp in a
nice house with his wife and two children. This house happened
to have a perfectly manicured lawn with a beautiful garden,
maintained by his wife, featuring lovely red roses. This house
was so close to the crematoriums that the shadows of the smokestacks
fell on the lawn on particularly sunny days. There was a path
between this house and the fence of the camp that led directly
from inside the camp to the crematorium where the bodies were
carried all day, every day. This is the backdrop of the nightmare
that is Through Roses.
The
musical style is that of “Sprechgesang” invented by Arnold Schoenberg
in 1912 with his Pierrot Lunaire. Interestingly, the
work most reminiscent is Schoenberg’s own “A Survivor from Warsaw” of
1947. The violinist, clutching his violin at all times, here
so torturously and movingly portrayed by the late German actor
Will Quadflieg (1914-2003), recounts his experiences in painful
flashbacks that still torment him forty years later.
The
score, for eight solo instruments, quotes fragments of military
marches and popular songs, the slow movement of Haydn’s Emperor
Quartet – which happens to be the melody of “Deutschland,
Deutschland uber alles”, Beethoven, Paganini, Wagner, Berg,
Mozart, Schubert and Bach. The Bach, for example, which serves
to represent a particularly painful moment the protagonist recalls,
is played in an imprecise manner representing the distortion
of the incident in the man’s memory.
The
music alternates between the lovely tunes he was forced to play
as a prisoner as he remembers and the angular, atonal music
representing his present nightmarish existence. Zukerman’s playing
throughout is especially notable. The original music composed
by Neikrug is so effective and the interpolation and overlapping
so successfully realized that you are there with him in his
mental prison that has taken the place of the camp. Quadflieg
masterfully and touchingly communicates the guilt, horror and
poignant resignation of his character living in his solitary
hell.
The
text was written by Neikrug himself and there are episodes here
of great poignancy and poetry – the man trying to scratch off
the number tattooed on his forearm, the man remembering the
great promise he held of a virtuoso career before the war, recalling
a lost love, lamenting his sleeplessness and his inability to
remember his dreams, the trains and the dogs of the camp, the
smell of the prisoners, the whining, the screaming, the unthinkable
inhumanity of the guards, the savage treatment of the children.
And,
finally, in perhaps one of the most heartbreakingly sorrowful
moments in any piece of music that I know of, the violinist
is haunted by the memory of one particular woman with beautiful,
long hair that he saw in the camp from time to time. One day,
as he’s playing, he sees her for the last time:
“What
a lovely setting to play in. The commandant’s wife is so creative.
She has made a floral paradise behind the house. Square lawns
with rows of flowers along the edges, yellow, blue … And even
a hedge of red roses. Red roses … lovely. Then through the
roses, I see her. Did I? But no, no, no, it couldn’t have
been, because of course there was no hair. And her hair was
so full, so dark and thick. No, no, no, no, it wasn’t her!
In any case I see a woman being carried by. On the pathway
to the crematorium. What strange colors people can acquire.
Blueish, grey. As the stretcher passes by she hears the music.
She hears my violin! Still alive she looks up at me! She looks
at me! And always at this point I’m amazed at how motionless
I stood, and emotionless I watched. As they beat her. She
died with a familiar smile … so strangely familiar. And the
dogs barked. And I played on … I played on. No memory. Numb.
Numb! Nothing was. Nothing ever will be. Nothing can ever
be ... Oh Diotima! I shall find you
there at last, you Gods of Death! There, Diotima, I will
sing of you.
But only tears.
And in the night through which I wander, your clear eyes
seem to fade away, heavenly spirit.”
Perhaps
in the future, we may pass someone on the street, maybe haggard,
maybe tormented, maybe with desperation or tragedy in their
eyes – maybe we’ll stop and consider what may have led them
to this sad height before we judge too harshly.
The
work is performed in German - the booklet has notes and the
full text in German with an English, French and Italian translation.
Unfortunately this CD is out of print but is well worth the
attempt to track it down. There was a film released of Through
Roses in 1997 in a German production starring Maximilian
Schell and directed by Jurgen Flimm which may be hard to find
but was available on DVD.
A
word about the composer: Marc Neikrug was born in New York on
24 September 1946, the son of the well-known and highly respected
cellist George Neikrug; his mother was also a cellist. In 1964
he entered Detmold University in Germany and in 1971 received
a Masters of Music from the State University on New York at
Stony Brook. He studied with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood
and with Rudolf Serkin in Marlboro. His duo partner as a pianist
has been the violinist Pinchas Zukerman for many years and they
have toured and recorded together extensively. Another popular
and acclaimed work of Neikrug’s is an opera “Los Alamos”, an
anti-nuclear piece which was the first American work commissioned
and premiered by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Maestro Neikrug is
currently the Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music
Festival.
The
current lack of an available recording of this unequivocal masterpiece
is inexplicable. It remains one of the most moving pieces that
I’ve ever experienced and one of my most cherished discs. This
particular performance should be re-released and a new recording
is long overdue.
Osvaldo
Polatkan
Note
Here
are several additional works related to the subject of the Holocaust
that I have found to be substantial and worth investigating:
“
A
Survivor from Warsaw” by Arnold Schoenberg
“ Letter
to Warsaw” by Thomas Pasatieri
“ Requiem
of Reconciliation” by various composers
“ Symphony
#3 – The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” by Henryk Gorecki
“ The
Song of Terezin” by Franz Waxman
“ Hebrew
Requiem” by Eric Zeisl
“ Symphony
#13, Babi Yar” by Dmitri Shostakovich
“ The
Diary of Anne Frank” by Grigori Fried
“ A
Little Miracle” by David Stock
“ Yellow
Stars” by Isaac Schwartz
“ Mechaye
Hametim” by Noam Sheriff
“ Di
Naye Hagode” by Max Helfman
“ Quartet
for the End of Time” by Olivier Messiaen
“ Deutsche
Sinfonie” by Hanns Eisler
“ String
Quartet #3, In Memoriam Holocaust” by Ruth Schonthal
“ Nenia
Judaeis Qui Hac Aetate Perierunt” (In Memory of the Jews Who
Perished in the Holocaust)” by Erich Itor Kahn
“ Voices
from the Shadow” by Gershon Kingsley
“ The
Holocaust Remembered” by Morris Bernstein & R.J. Miller
“ Elegy
for Anne Frank” by Lukas Foss
“ Holocaust
Requiem – Kaddish for Terezin” by Ronald Senator
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